Abdullah Dardari, Syria’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, said while visiting France, that Syria expected to attract $55 Billion in Investment Over 5 Years. This number is more reasonable than the 77 billion that the Oxford Business Group said the Assad government expected to attract over five years in July.

In February 2009, Dardari said,

“Syria’s infrastructural needs are estimated to cost 50 billion dollars over the next 10 years. In addition, Syria needs to build some 200,000 residential units within five years;  it must construct some 40,000 additional hotel rooms by 2015 in order to accommodate the expected 8 million tourists by that year.

In June of this year, President Assad said that Syria “hopes to attract $44 billion in private investment over the next five years.”

John Dagge of Syria Today also uses the $50 bn number in his September 2010 article on Investment banks. He writes:

The most recent development in the country’s banking sector came at the end of July when President Bashar al-Assad issued Decree No. 56, allowing investment banks to enter the market. The decree comes as Syria looks to raise SYP 2,350bn (USD 50bn) in infrastructure investments over the next five years.

“Investment banks will stand as… a way to secure sources of funding needed to finance huge projects,” Adib Mayaleh, governor of the Central Bank of Syria (CBS), told Syria Today. He added that he had already held discussions with a number of European firms interested in entering the market.

How reasonable is it for Syria to expect to raise $50 bn in five years or $10 bn a year?

Let’s look at Syria’s Foreign Direct Investment history.  Dardari told reporters today in Paris that investment in Syria this year will reach $2.5 billion.

He said the country’s economy will grow at about 5.8 percent this year and an average of 5.5 percent to 6 percent over the next five years.

If Syria does attract 2.5 bn foreign investment this year, it will be a big jump and put Syria in league with Morocco and Tunisia – See this graph of DRI for Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria, here.

According to the Syrian Investment Agency, about US$1.19bn were invested by foreigners in the country in 2008. Despite the global economic slowdown, the volume of FDI increased by 32.2% last year (up from US$898m in 2007 and from US$613m in 2006).

2009 FDI Syria – Syria attracted USD 1.5 billion in foreign direct investments in 2009, according to a report by the Arab Investment and Export Credit Guarantee Corporation.

Here is the history

.613  2006
.898  2007
1.19  2008
1.50  2009
(2.50 ? 2010)

The neighbors attracted the following amount of FDI last year.

Tunisia 1.77
Algeria 2.31
Egypt 6.7
Lebanon 4.8
Sudan 2.9
Morocco 2.5

Even Dardari knows that to go from 2 billion to over 10 billion by next year will be difficult if not impossible.

“We know we need a big leap forward to attract this investment,” Dardari said. “We know that there are many things we have to do in terms of financial markets and protectionism.” Legislation will be introduced or amended on public procurement, independent electrical generation, investment banking, leasing, mortgage financing, central bank independence and local credit guarantees, Dardari said. Syria is also considering starting an export guarantee program.

“Even with all these changes, we have a long way to go,” Dardari said. “A competitive economy is a mindset, a new way of seeing things. This is the real challenge. But the political determination is unquestionable. There is no going back.” …..

The newly released “corruption perception index” ranks Syria 126 out of 180 (Lebanon and Libya at 130 with Yemen at, 154 Iran at 168 and Iraq and Sudan at 176). Somalia was the dead last. Impressive was the ranking of Qatar at 22 (ahead of France!). Another noteworthy country was Jordan at 49, beating Turkey (at 61) and Italy (at 63).

Syria is negotiating a free-trade agreement with the Mercosur trade bloc, which includes Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil, Dardari said. The country has a free-trade agreement
with Turkey and an interim agreement with Iran. Capital Intelligence and the International Monetary Fund have said the government should focus on implementing changes that would quicken its transition to a market-based economy. The IMF forecasts that Syria’s economic growth will rise to 5 percent in 2010 from 4 percent last year.

[SYR] Syria raises petrol prices 10%
2010-09-23

The Syrian government has announced a 10% rise in petrol prices following a spike in consumption and rising cost of subsidising other fuels, Reuters has reported. The government has steadily raised petrol prices in the last several years but this has not cut consumption as decade-long bans on importing cars were lifted and car buying spiked. Unlike gas oil and fuel  oil, petrol is not subsidised in Syria, which produces 380,000 barrels per day of crude oil but does not have enough refining capacity to meet domestic needs.

Syria Looks to Russia as Sanctions Hit Plan to Buy Airbus
2010-09-24, By Gregory Viscusi and Massoud A. Derhally

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) — Syria is in talks with Russia about buying planes as U.S. sanctions have stalled negotiations to buy as many as 50 Airbus SAS aircraft, said Abdallah Dardari, the deputy prime minister for economic affairs. “I’m looking for planes with less than 10 percent of U.S. components,” Dardari told reporters today in Paris. “That leaves only Russia. We’ve spoken about it with President Dmitry Medvedev. We are in negotiations.”

Dardari said in an August 2008 interview that Syria plans to modernize the fleet of its state-run carrier, Syrian Arab Airlines. The airline had sought to buy single-aisle Airbus A320s as well as twin-aisle A330, A340 and A350 models. It had planned to lease four planes and then take delivery of the first 14 Airbus airliners from 2010 to 2018 and a further 36 by 2028.

Idaf points out that Syrian identity in the Golan is growing and points us to this article: The changing generations of Syrians in Israel by Benjamin Joffe-Walt.

A Syrian Kurd has been sentenced to three years in jail in Spain for throwing a shoe at Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Next door in Italy, police seized a large amount of explosives that were headed for Syria.

Italian police have seized seven tons of the powerful RDX explosive which they found in a shipping container they believe were likely destined for a terrorist organization. While the origin and destination of the contraband is still being …

Christian Sci Mn: Syrian real estate market prices out young adults
2010-09-22

A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent. “Mustaheel,” (impossible) has become the typical refrain of young Syrians asked about their plans to move out of the house. Exorbitant real estate prices and limited …

Syrians agree to disagree on pros and cons of traditional marriage in modern society.
Syrians divided over traditional marriages
By Jennifer Mackenzie & Mayar Mnini – DAMASCUS

It was a typical beginning to a traditional marriage: a beautiful girl was spotted at a swimming pool by the mother of an eligible young man. After all, according to tradition, it is the groom’s mother who finds an appropriate wife for her son, visiting the potential bride’s family house to look for signs of her class, cleanliness, and cooking abilities, and accompanying the girl to a Turkish bath to check her beauty and fitness.

So when the girl, a student at Damascus University, climbed out of the pool, a hopeful mother approached her and asked if she was looking for a husband. Then the story veered from its time-honored course: the girl rejected the whole scenario and walked away upset.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said, recounting the event to her friends, also university students, who laugh and agree. From a section of society that is well-educated and well-traveled, their ideas about how they want to marry differ markedly both from those of their parents and of many of their contemporaries. And their growing sense of independence, or at least questioning, is re-shaping marriage practices in Syria.

Jewish and Palestinian Syrians living in peace in Old Damascus
Real friendships remain between some Syrians, emigrated Jewish community that left Syria.
By Julian Weinberg – DAMASCUS

Faisal and Musa are drinking tea, laughing, and reminiscing about old times in Musa’s antique shop in Old Damascus. Musa has just returned from America, where he now lives, and one of the first things he did after catching up with his relatives was to invite Faisal to his family’s house for dinner. That was last night, and the two of them are still giggling about their memories. Faisal is Palestinian, and Musa Jewish.

On the surface, this seems a striking incompatibility in the region, an effect of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This has never stopped these two Syrians from having a very close friendship. “Every day we have a story,” said Musa, “ you know, we used to go to the Sheraton Hotel to drink every night,” he continued, as Faisal, laughed on a drag of his cigarette, choking slightly.

Although most of Syria’s Jewish community has emigrated and the estimated number of Jews still living in Syria is between 25 and 200, they were not forced to leave after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. This led to the development of real friendships that both sides, Syrian and the emigrated Jewish community, recount with fondness and sorrow….

Negotiations between Syria and Israel have reportedly come close to a final agreement, but are currently stalled despite international encouragement, since the new Israeli government took power. However, there have been reports over the last few years that some from Syria’s US-based Jewish community would like to play a role one day in bringing the two nations together. “I’m looking forward to peace and when everyone comes together and lives in peace,” lamented Musa. “My mother stills says she will return home,” added Faisal.

Syrian artists at Christie’s

US and Iran favour Maliki as Iraq PM six months after polls
by Assad Abboud Assad Abboud – Tue Sep 7

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has the backing of Washington and US arch-foe Iran to keep his job, six months after he narrowly lost an election to ex-premier Iyad Allawi, politicians said Tuesday.

The United States has consistently denied having any favoured candidate for the premiership but amid growing impatience for a new government in Baghdad it now sees Maliki as the conflict-wracked country’s only viable leader.

A grave fear that Allawi will “re-Baathify” Iraq, bringing former allies of Saddam Hussein back to power, has also led its Shiite parties, with close ties to Iran, to accept Maliki, despite scepticism about his character and ability.

Maliki’s State of Law Alliance, a Shiite grouping, gained two fewer seats in the election than Iraqiya, a broadly secular coalition with strong Sunni backing led by Allawi, a Shiite.

But neither man has managed to gain a working parliamentary majority despite months of coalition negotiations, leaving the nation’s politics in limbo amid growing public frustration at the lack of progress.

There have been 56 national elections or referendums worldwide, according to IFES (the International Foundation for Electoral Systems), since Iraqis voted in the parliamentary poll on March 7.

The impasse has led US officials, anxious to avoid further delays that could potentially cause Iraq’s fledgling democracy to unravel, to seek a Maliki-led government that gives a prominent role to Allawi.

A senior State of Law official said Maliki received assurances during US Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit that major neighbouring Arab countries, except Saudi Arabia, had decided to stop backing Allawi’s premiership hopes.

“Maliki was quoting Biden as saying, ‘Iraqiya has many problems and complexities… I told Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar and United Arab Emirates to end their support for Allawi,’” the official said Biden told Maliki.

“‘They were all convinced except Saudi Arabia,’” he quoted the vice president as saying.

Netanyahu Says Golan Wind Farm a ‘National’ Project
2010-09-24
By Sally Bakewell

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) — Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave “national infrastructure project” status to a $400 million wind farm on Israel’s Golan Heights, clearing it for fast-track approval by regulators.

“SYRIA’S IMPROVED RELATIONS WITH TURKEY IS THE CENTER-PIECE TO BASHAR ASSAD’S NEW FOREIGN POLICY”
JOSHUA LANDIS
Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies, (ORSAM) Turkey

Joshua M. Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma and writer of the a daily newsletter blog Syria Comment on Syrian politics answered ORSAM’s questions on Syrian foreign policy, regional politics, peace process and relations of Syria with Israel, Lebanon and Turkey.

ORSAM: To start with Syrian foreign policy in general, it is usually analyzed with neo-realist considerations, omnibalancing approach rests on regime survival concerns, historical sociology pays attention to the levels of state formation or political economy. What do you think are the main determinants of Syrian foreign policy?

Joshua M. Landis: All regimes and countries defend themselves. This is not shocking and shouldn’t be a revelation in explaining the behavior of Syria’s leadership. For example, Tony Blair has revealed in his recently published memoirs that Vice President Cheney was deadly serious in his ambition to bring down the Syrian state following Washington’s successful destruction of the Iraqi state. It is in this light that we can understand Syria’s determination to assist the emergence of an Iraqi resistance that could frustrate Washington’s further designs of regime destruction in the region.

Syria’s most important foreign policy goals are to remain a regional power, get back the Golan Heights that was taken from it in 1967 by Israel, remain the principal power in Lebanon, which Syria considers crucial for its defense, and to tend its key relations with both Iran and Turkey.

ORSAM: Another related question, some constructivist scholars claim that the domestic transformation triggered by economic liberalization helped Syrian identity undergo a transformation from Arab to separate Syrian identity. Do you agree with this? In your opinion, to what extent identity shapes foreign policy behavior in Syria?

Joshua M. Landis: National identity is an important factor in shaping Syrian foreign policy as it is for most states. Syria has been growing into its borders that were imposed on it by France and Britain following WWI. Damascus has normalized relations with most neighbors and settled most border disputes. Most notably, this is the case with Turkey. By traveling to Ankara in 2004, Bashar al-Assad indicated that Syria was willing to bow to Turkey’s 1939 annexation of Sanjak of Iskanderoun, or the Vilayet of Hatay in order to build good relations. All the same, it would be a mistake to suggest that Syria has abandoned Arabism for Syrianism. It has not. The constitution and laws of Syria enshrine its Arab identity, Syria’s Kurds and ethnic minorities are compelled to embrace the majority Arab identity despite their protests and preference for a uniquely Syrian identity. Moreover, the government continues to use Arabism to justify its foreign policy interests in the neighborhood.

ORSAM: After the initial years that Bashar Assad’s leadership capabilities were questioned, he is showing a leader profile that has strengthened his situation both inside and outside. Syria seems to overcome the period of isolation and pressure started with President Bush. How do you evaluate Bashar Assad period Syrian foreign policy?

Joshua M. Landis: Assad has been very successful in frustrating US and Israeli ambitions in the region. The Bush administration sought to force Damascus to reverse its foreign policy ambitions and “flip” from being an ally of Iran to embracing Washington’s interests. Turkey has been crucial in enabling Assad’s foreign policy successes in Iraq and toward Israel. Ankara refused to fall in step with President Bush’s policy of isolating Damascus and punishing it with economic sanctions. Turkey’s independent policy has earned it great admiration and gratitude in Syria. Despite Washington’s determined effort to drive Syria from Lebanon and destroy Hizbullah, Damascus remains the predominant power in Beirut and the Shiite militia has grown in strength.

ORSAM: How do you evaluate Bashar Assad’s policy towards Israel in the first decade of his presidency? Direct peace talks between Israel and Palestinians started and George Mitchell told that they are trying to engage Syria. What do you predict about Syrian-Israeli relations in the upcoming decade?

Joshua M. Landis: Israeli-Syrian relations have been largely determined by the balance of power between the two countries. Israel remains a regional super power and Syria’s military capabilities are limited. This means that Jerusalem can ignore Syrian demands and avoid accepting the Arab Peace Initiative put forward in 2002. All the same, Israel has failed to destroy Hizbullah and Hamas and has failed to dissuade Russian and Iran from selling arms to Damascus, which means that Syria retains some leverage in its relations with Israel. Syria is unlikely to abandon its claim to the Golan, support for Palestinians resistance and enmity to Israel.

ORSAM: Bashar Assad recently said “the prospects of war and confrontation are increasing”. How do you evaluate war rhetoric of Bashar Assad? What is the reason of these frequent war discourses in the Middle East?

Joshua M. Landis: Assad is determined to resist Israeli expansion as he is determined to improve Syria’s weaponry. This is likely to provoke Israeli preemtive military retribution. Israel’s 2006 war with Hizbullah, 2007 bombing of Syria’s nuclear facility, and 2009 bombing of Gaza were short wars designed to keep its enemies weak and plient. So long as Syria refuses to accept Israel’s claim to the Golan and settlement expansion, there is every reason to believe that Jerusalem will continue to pursue its policy of periodic military strikes.

ORSAM: What can you say about the withdrawal of the US from Iraq? Considering the effect of Iraqi war, how will this new term affect Syria?

Joshua M. Landis: Syria is enthusiastic about the US withdrawal from Iraq and hopes for the formation of a new government in Baghdad that will pursue improved economic relations with Syria.

ORSAM: How should we read the recent visit of King Abdullah and Bashar Assad to Beirut? What are the possible implications of this visit in terms of the future of Lebanon?

Joshua M. Landis: Syria and Saudi Arabia have patched up their relations, which deteriorated badly during the Bush administration. Lebanon was their main point of conflict, but both countries seem to have put this difference behind them. Syria has reasserted its political primacy in Lebanon, and Saudi authorities have accepted this Syrian leadership, but have retained a leading position in the Lebanese economy. In short, Syrian-Saudi relations have returned to what they were before President Bush invaded Iraq with the object of transforming the Greater Middle East and wrestling Lebanon from Syria’s sphere of influence.

ORSAM: Lebanon Special Tribunal will soon declare its indictment regarding Hariri murder. Probably Hezbollah will be claimed to be affiliated with the murder. Within this framework, firstly, previously the target in the indictments was Syria. What does it mean that the target turned into Hezbollah, should it be understood as natural development of the investigation or as a policy change? Secondly, how will the declaration of the indictment affect the political and security situation in Lebanon?

The Tribunal’s indictments will probably not be politically explosive. Even though the Special Tribunal was originally established by the US to further its political objectives in the region and to eliminating Syrian influence in Lebanon, those objectives have largely been abandoned. Renewed Saudi-Syrian cooperation and the survival of Lebanon’s national unity government suggest that regional powers are cooperating to make sure that the indictments will not change the communal balance of power in Lebanon.

ORSAM: You lived many years in Syria. What can you say about developing Turkey-Syrian relations? How is perception of Turkey in Syria? Do you see this cooperation as permanent or a temporary convergence of interests? What do the developing ties mean for the Middle East?

Joshua M. Landis: Syria’s improved relations with Turkey is the center-piece to Bashar al-Assad’s new Foreign Policy. President Assad has called his strategy the Five Seas Plan. It is an attempt to maximize Syria’s geographical position as the link for oil, gas and transportation between the the Arabian, Mediterranean, Caspian, Black and Red Seas.

Interestingly enough Turkey has played an important role in Assad’s development of this vision. Just as Syria has begun to replicate Turkey’s “zero problems” foreign policy, it has also borrowed heavily from Turkey’s economic vision of itself as the link between Europe and Asia. Assad first began to develop his plan in 2004 during his early visits to Istanbul. He spoke with the Turks about developing the infrastructure to turn Syria into the transport hub for oil, gas and electrical power. Syria would link Turkey to Africa and the Arab world. Iraq was in a shambles and unsafe, leaving Syria the only route through the Middle East. In May 2009, when President Assad traveled to Vienna and Greece, he continued to push the five seas plan to European investors.

In June of 2010, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan laid the groundwork for a “Free Trade Zone” that does away with visa requirements and tariffs. Syria hopes that Iraq and ultimately Iran will be brought into this agreement. Syria has already eliminated visa requirements for Iranians. Syria has recently opened a gas pipeline that connects Egypt to Turkey. It has plans to rebuild the oil pipeline that connects Kirkuk in Iraq to the Mediterranean coast, which is the most direct and least expensive way to get Iraq’s northern oil to market. Assad has spoken of the need to generate investments worth $77bn from the private sector over the next five years in order to build up Syria’s infrastructure turn his vision into reality. If Syria can attract these investments and preserve stability it will be well on its way to breaking out of its economic stagnation. Improving economic, military, and cultural relations with Turkey are key to Syria’s plans. Turkey’s prime minister has spoken his country’s special relationship with Syria as a model for the relations he hopes to develop with other countries in the region. Every indication seems to point toward a permanent improvement in Syrian-Turkish relations.

*This interview was conducted on 6 September 2010 by ORSAM Middle East Research Assistant Selen Tonkuş Kareem.

“Memorizing school books by heart is no more the way to excellence with the new curricula,” says the Assistant Education Minster, Ali al-Hasri.

This could be a very important change for Syria, if it can be implemented. When I attended the University of Damascus in the 1980s,  exams for the English and History classes were based on memorizing the lectures. One Fulbright English professor from the US  who taught a class of 600 students showed me his blue books for the final exam., the only grade in the course. All but 15 of the blue books were copied from his lectures, which had been taped, transcribed (badly), mimeographed and sold to students before the exam. The students memorized the lectures by heart rather than read the novels – Jane Austin, Dickens, etc., that were assigned. In response to questions that had little to do with his lectures, the students reproduced his lectures on the author word for word.

Critical thinking emphasised in new school curriculum: Problem solving and decision making will replace memorisation, Assistant Education Minister Ali al-Hasri said.

Raqqa, (SANA) – Memorizing school books by heart is no more the way to excellence with the new curricula. The measure is now the ability of learners to deal with problems, how to solve them and link them to real life situations, Assistant Education Minister Ali al-Hasri said.

Inspecting the training courses on the new curricula in Raqqa province on Monday, al-Hasri told SANA that the Ministry of Education considers the new curricula as extremely important. The Ministry is training teachers to deal with these curricula which were based on modern educational and scientific methods.

He pointed out that the new curricula will start based on a student-centered learning process as the focus is on the learner’s activities in and out of the classroom. This requires developing the learner’s skills in solving problems, taking decisions, shouldering the responsibility and teamwork, while the teacher is a guide for the learners.

Evenings of Poetry Provide a Space for New Voices
By KAREEM FAHIM and NAWARA MAHFOUD

DAMASCUS, Syria — Lukman Derky, the host of a weekly poetry salon here, was in classic form, a beer perched below a microphone he used to joke, to soothe, to provoke. He read a short poem by Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national bard, and gave a shout-out to a regular, a young American named Mitch, who sat in the crowd, among dozens of other foreigners.

“We brought you an imperialist,” Mr. Derky kidded his audience. “So you would have some peace of mind.”

He also politely apologized to any secret policemen he might have offended with one of his stories. Two men who fit that description, sitting at a table by the bar, quietly sipped their drinks.

So it goes on Monday nights at Bayt al-Qasid, or the House of Poetry, a space for freewheeling expression in a country where that space is usually in short supply. In sessions lubricated with local arak and Lebanese beer, Mr. Derky, a salon host with the bearing of Lenny Bruce, presides over an irreverent evening that the regulars say is impossible to find elsewhere in Syria, and indeed, would be hard to replicate anywhere else.

He intended it as a space for new voices and not the same parade of poets and writers whom Syrians had been hearing from since the 1960s. Sometimes, those intellectuals, as Mr. Derky somewhat derisively referred to them, “show up and feel like strangers.”

Though Syrians are smitten with poetry and with their celebrated scribes, including Nizar Qabbani, Bayt al-Qasid provides one of the few platforms for young or undiscovered poets. The evenings here also draw writers from overseas, who listen as their work is translated from Spanish or Greek or Berber into Arabic on the spot.

“To know others is to read their poetry,” Mr. Derky said. “Bayt al-Qasid is a place for the others.”

The performers who step up to Mr. Derky’s podium follow his lead and take risks, reading works by exiled poets or flirting with risky political subjects. But the point of the evening is not insubordination, Mr. Derky insists. “We don’t do things because they are forbidden,” he says. “The night is about freedom.” That may explain why it has survived for more than two years now, in full view of a government that has little stomach for dissent.

It also explains why it is hard to find a seat. There were none available on an evening last month in the basement bar where, underneath posters of Malcolm X, Gandhi and Charlie Parker, American students huddled in groups, an entourage waited for one young Syrian poet and a couple snuggled in a corner. Mr. Derky dished out his typically eclectic monologue.

He sang a Shiite mourning hymn and told a joke about the invasion of Iraq. He welcomed a British writer, Stephen Watts, who read a poem called “Birds of East London” that was translated simultaneously by a young Syrian poet who somehow managed to quickly interpret the line “when you see that kestrel pinioned on its wing-bone.” A bald Syrian read another poem, to muted applause.

A Kurdish musical troupe brought the evening to a rousing close.

“You don’t hear that music in public like this,” said Khalid Elekhetyar, a Syrian journalist and a regular who sat at one of the round red tables near the front. If the state was watching, it was apparently enjoying the show. “In this space, they don’t give any conditions,” he said.

Mr. Derky, a frenetic Kurd with shoulder-length hair, has for years been a fixture of Syria’s creative class, a chain-smoking renaissance character who seems to delight in poking the establishment.

He performs one-man shows and writes for television. He was homeless for a time, and now roams his neighborhood in Damascus every morning, looking for stories to fill a newspaper column. He is well known for a stint as the editor of a satirical weekly that enjoyed a brief heyday after President Bashar al-Assad took power 10 years ago.

As Mr. Derky tells it, in 2001, when the publisher of the weekly, Al Doumari, first asked for his thoughts on the newspaper’s design, Mr. Derky asked him for a liter of arak, a bag of ice, pickles and hummus, and told the publisher to come back later that night to look at a mock-up. Eleven popular issues later, Mr. Derky left the magazine over differences with the publisher, and by 2003 the government had had enough and shut it down.

A few years ago, Mr. Derky had the idea for a poetry night. He found space in the underused bar of the Fardoss Tower hotel in downtown Damascus, which on other nights is a disco or just a dark watering hole.

It seemed like an opportune time: in 2008, Unesco had selected the city as that year’s Arab capital of culture, and Mr. Derky said he sensed “a little bit of openness.”

Though poetry is widely read throughout the Middle East, independent showcases like Bayt al-Qasid are increasingly hard to find, Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi poet and novelist who is an assistant professor of Arabic literature at New York University, said.

“Many of the cafes which used to be literary and cultural nodes have closed down — especially in Beirut — or have been transformed because of gentrification,” he said. Poets often have to pay publishers to carry their work and rarely receive royalties. “The culture ministries in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere are a caricature of what they should be. Beyond the Internet, where hundreds of sites exist for publishing, young poets don’t have many outlets or forums.”

At Bayt al-Qasid, the evening starts at 10 p.m., but people start arriving hours earlier. During an intermission, a parking lot behind the hotel is filled with smokers. Talk during the performances quickly invites angry glances from the other patrons.

On another Monday last month, a young Iraqi poet, Hoshang Waziri, read a poem about God and Satan, another touchy subject. A patron, Sahban al-Sawah, sipped his arak and sang Bayt al-Qasid’s praises.

“In a culture that loathes dialogue,” the evening represented something different, said Mr. Sawah, the editor of a poetry Web site.

“What is tackled here,” he said, “would never be approached elsewhere.”